Site Mobile Navigation

7 in Renegade Amish Group Charged With Assaults

Five of the seven men arrested Wednesday in court in Millersburg, Ohio. Not shown is Sam Mullet, who the authorities say founded a renegade group whose members cut the beards and hair of other Amish men and women.Credit
Mike Schenk/Wooster Daily Record, via Associated Press

Federal agents arrested the leader of a renegade Amish group and six others in eastern Ohio on Wednesday and charged them with hate crimes for a series of beard- and hair-cutting assaults against Amish men and women.

In a case that drew wide attention because of the unusual nature of the attacks, five of the men were arrested last month on kidnapping and other state charges, and were out on bail. At the time of those arrests, officials said that the founder of the breakaway group, Sam Mullet, 66, had not taken part directly in the nighttime assaults against his perceived enemies, and he was not initially charged.

But at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, the F.B.I. and local sheriffs raided the splinter settlement near the village of Bergholz, arresting Mr. Mullet, three of his sons and three other followers on federal hate-crime and conspiracy charges.

“We believe these attacks were religiously motivated,” Steven M. Dettelbach, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said in a telephone interview. “While people are free to disagree about religion in this country, we don’t settle those disagreements with late-night visits, dangerous weapons and violent attacks.”

Prosecutors in Holmes County, Ohio, said Wednesday that they would dismiss the state charges to allow the federal prosecution to go forward. The seven men were to be arraigned Wednesday in Youngstown, Ohio.

The distinctive beards worn by married Amish men, and the uncut hair that married women keep rolled in buns, are treasured symbols of religious identity, and the attacks appeared intended to inflict public humiliation, said Donald B. Kraybill, an expert on the Amish at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

Photo

Sam Mullet, the leader of a renegade Amish group, outside his home in Bergholz, Ohio, in October.Credit
Amy Sancetta/Associated Press

In at least four violent attacks over the last few months, groups of men from Mr. Mullet’s compound held men down to shear their beards with scissors and battery-operated clippers, according to the authorities. In one case, they said, several of Mr. Mullet’s nephews also hacked off the hair of their own mother — Mr. Mullet’s sister — who had fled the compound years earlier.

One victim told investigators that “he would prefer to have been beaten black and blue than to suffer the disfigurement and humiliation of having his hair removed,” according to the F.B.I. affidavit supporting the hate-crime charges. The attacks caused fear and bewilderment among the 60,000 Amish of Ohio, who are pacifists and reject the idea of revenge.

Former residents of Mr. Mullet’s compound said he exerted iron control over the settlement of 120, many of them his relatives, sometimes imprisoning men in a chicken coop for days or beating them. Former residents also said that Mr. Mullet had sex with married women in the community “to cleanse them of the devil,” according to the F.B.I. affidavit.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Mr. Mullet moved with some followers to an isolated valley near Bergholz in 1995 after conflicts with Amish leaders in another part of the state. He was ordained as a minister in 1997 and later as a bishop. But he fell out with other Amish bishops in eastern Ohio, who determined that his effort to excommunicate eight families that left his compound in 2005 was not justified.

Mr. Mullet has apparently nursed a grudge ever since, and the recent victims included bishops who opposed his excommunication decrees as well as people who aided those who fled from his community.

The federal affidavit provides details of four beard-cutting attacks and notes that the assailants took photographs of the victims to keep a record of their humiliation. It describes recorded telephone conversations between Mr. Mullet and some of those jailed in October, in which they discussed possible further beard-cutting reprisals against their Amish enemies.

In justifying the charges against Mr. Mullet, the affidavit also cites his statements to reporters that the dispute was a religious one, that he had been treated unfairly by other Amish and that he should be able to punish people who violate the laws of the church.

Correction: November 23, 2011

A previous version of this article misstated when the seven men arrested were to be arraigned in Youngstown, Ohio; it was scheduled for Wednesday, not Thursday.

A version of this article appears in print on November 24, 2011, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: 7 Arrested in Hair-Cutting Attacks on Amish. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe